sc: the Venerable Spreadsheet Calculator

If you like vi, and you like the command line, you will love sc—a spreadsheet that runs in a terminal.

Conclusion

Linux users have many options for spreadsheets, not to mention Web-based ones, including Google Docs
spreadsheets. But, most people probably would be stumped if asked for a
spreadsheet that can be used in a terminal. sc is one of
the oldest FOSS spreadsheets. It's been available for more than 20 years, and
it's
terminal-based, with keybindings that should be familiar to any vi user.
It supports advanced macros, plugins and external functions, and it can
export to its own format, plain text, LaTeX or CSV for easy input to
other spreadsheets.

Just on the day I started exploring sc on my Nanonote,
which was highligted in the same issue, I discovered this
really helpful article via web search. When my October
issue came in, I'm sure I saw the article, but it did
not catch my attention then:)

My quick review of sc revealed that there was no feature
to import from other formats. The Python script looked
like it solved the problem, but on my first test I found
that it treated all numbers containing a decimal point
as labels--not what I wanted. Changing the call
to string.atol() to string.atof() and changing
the format "let %c%d = %d' to 'let %c%d = %g'
solved the problem.

Now on to exploring sc on the Ben Nanonote. Thanks
for a timely article.